Survival in Auschwitz
In February 1944, Primo Levi, a twenty-four-year-old Italian Jewish chemist who had joined a small, doomed partisan band in the mountains near Aosta, was captured, identified as a Jew, and transported to Auschwitz with six hundred and fifty Italian Jews. Eleven months later, when the Red Army reached Monowitz, only twenty of them were alive. Survival in Auschwitz, published in Italian in 1947 as Se questo è un uomo, is Levi's account of that year, written in the cool, scrupulous prose of a working scientist who has decided that the only honest response to what was done is exact description. He walks through the arrival, the selection, the language of the Lager, the chemistry laboratory that kept him alive, and the liberation, and the book remains one of the essential first-person documents of the Shoah.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Survival in Auschwitz
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Primo Levi, a young Italian Jewish chemist, was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. His memoir, originally titled If This Is a Man, walks through camp arrival, work in a synthetic rubber factory, and the strange last days.
Survival in Auschwitz (Italian title Se questo e un uomo, 1947) was written by Primo Levi. Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist who survived eleven months at Auschwitz. The American title differs from the Italian; in the UK it is published as If This Is a Man.
Yes. Survival in Auschwitz is Primo Levi's nonfiction account of his deportation to and imprisonment at Auschwitz from February 1944 through January 1945. It is widely cited as one of the most important Holocaust memoirs.
Survival in Auschwitz is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
Survival in Auschwitz is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.